Murder by Misadventure

by B. T. Lord

  It wasn’t until she was in her pajamas and cuddled under her covers, that the fear started to dissipate. Just to be on the safe side though, she closed her eyes and refused to open them until morning.

  Things like that don’t happen in Twin Ponds. They just don’t. Lydia was trying to scare me and ruin everything. I’m so mad that she succeeded. From now on, I swear I’m going to ignore all her talk about spells and monsters. And I’m definitely not going to let her screw things up, or mess with my head. Twin Ponds is probably the safest town to live in. Actually it is the safest place to live in.

  And with that, Emmy drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Todd Paradis was about to die.

  Yet adrenalin and the need to survive pushed him forward, through the deep snow drifts, further into the forests he’d once called home, but that now threatened to swallow him up.

  He didn’t know how it was going to come. And that was the worst. How would he die?

  Please God, I don’t want to die…

  Funny, him turning to God now. He’d always ignored the Big Guy in the past. Even spent a few years not believing in Him at all. But now, with the end so close, he desperately reached out for any help he could get as he felt the icy touch of death run a line down the back of his neck, caressing his cheek and laughing at the futility of his flight.

  He jerked his head up as he realized the laughter was not coming from his imagination. It was real, and it was coming at him from the tops of the trees, from the snow around his knees that he battled to get through, from the very chilled air that surrounded him.

  This can’t be happening. It can’t!

  But it was. And the laugher was growing louder. He wanted to clamp his gloved hands over his ears to shut out the obscene sounds. But that would slow him down.

  And the last thing he wanted was to slow down to be devoured by the horror that was after him.

  The snow hampered him, a keen of despair bubbling up in his throat. In his 45 years on earth, he’d had moments of profound fear. But this was incomparable. This was a terror so deep, so paralyzing, he couldn’t think straight. His mind refused to function - to try to make sense of the nonsensical. These things only existed in legends. In stories told around campfires in the summer.

  But he’d entered another world – a world where the unreal was real. Where his mind had only one thought – to run. To survive.

  He looked up at the full moon, a part of his brain registering its round, serene brightness, telling him this would be the last time he’d look upon it, while the other part of his brain screamed at him to keep going.

  But he was tiring. The snow was too deep. And where could he go where he wouldn’t be found?

  The laughter rose in maniacal hysteria, coming at him from all sides. Then as quickly as it started, it abruptly stopped.

  The silence of the woods slowed his step. He strained to hear something, anything, but his own painful panting drowned out all sound. He looked about him, peering into the shadows thrown off by the moonlight. He waited. His heart hammered in his ears. A few moments went by. Then another few moments, and so on until almost ten minutes ticked by. He was still standing. He scanned the forest, but it was devoid of life. Of sound. It was just him and the snow and the trees.

  A thought occurred to him that both frightened and exhilarated him. It was a thought he dared not acknowledge, but knew it to be true nevertheless.

  He was still alive.

  Was it possible? Had he somehow outrun death?

  The chill of the night seeped into Todd’s snow soaked jeans. He shook with cold. He absently reached up to his chin with his gloved hand and discovered icicles hanging from his beard and moustache.

  There was complete stillness all around him now. The pines were hushed, the snow on their branches sparkling in the moonlight. He’d never been this deep in the forest before. Certainly not in the dark. He’d never feared the woods at night. But he’d respected it. Any sane person would. There were creatures out here, hungry creatures, who wouldn’t hesitate to take down a human if they could.

  He scanned the dense trees, alert for anything that would tell him they were still after him. For there were creatures about this night. Creatures that were more than hungry. They were ravenous. And insatiable.

  He had no chance against them.

  He took a deep, long breath in an attempt to slow down his heartbeat and stop the shivering that overtook him now that he was no longer running.

  His feet grew numb, as did his face. Todd looked up at the moon again, and allowed a small smile to cross his frozen lips.

  “I did it,” he whispered into the crisp night air. “I outran death.”

  He chuckled.

  A loud crack of lightning split open the sky. It bypassed the tall pines. The snow covered hills. It searched for its prey.

  And found it.

  He heard the thundering roar of the lightning bolt overhead. Before his mind could register what was happening, it was too late. He fell over into the snow, his back ablaze with the most excruciating pain he had ever felt. He felt the claws of what had chased him rip a seam down his back, eviscerating him. It was the stuff of unimaginable nightmares. He was being taken apart while he still lived. With his face smashed into the numbing snow, and the things at his back ripping him to pieces, he hadn’t outrun death. It had claimed him in its voracious hunger for souls.

  Todd tried to get up – to shake these creatures off him, but it was impossible. He felt weighed down by the pain. By the snow that suddenly grabbed him and wouldn’t let go. From the corner of his eye, he saw shadows emerge from the tree line and make their way towards him.

  We’re coming for you, Todd. You can’t escape. You never could escape…

  His whimpers turned to screams, but there was no one to hear him in this desolate forest. Just the shadows drawing closer and closer until they were all upon him. Over him. Whispering in his ears. Suffocating him until he could breathe no more. His last breath was a cry for supplication. For mercy. But there was no compassion. No pity.

  Just the snow and the trees and the animals that hid in their burrows from the tortured shrieks that didn’t belong in their world.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  At HQ the next morning, Cammie was in the process of pouring herself a cup of coffee when Rick arrived. Before taking off his scarf and parka, he stepped up to her.

  “What did you do to Doc last night?”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, savoring her first sip of the day.

  “I just ran into him on Main Street. I said good morning and he just about took my head off. You criticize his cooking or something?”

  Cammie shook her head. “And risk having him cut me off from his fabulous meals? Are you nuts?”

  “Well, someone or something put a hair across his ass. Hopefully he doesn’t take it out on one of his patients.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about Doc is that he has the ability to separate his personal life from his professional life. But now that you mention it, he has been worse than usual lately.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Now you’re asking me to take my life into my hands by asking him.” She shrugged. “Hopefully, he’ll open up eventually and tell me. Until then, I walk on eggshells.”

  Rick stripped off his scarf. “That’s got to be stressful. Why don’t you just go home? I can see you’re feeling a lot better.”

  “I’m almost 100% back. Another week or so, and I’ll probably move back. Until then, it’s hard to say good-bye to the bed from paradise, and the shower from heaven.”

  Rick gave her a quizzical look. She was about to explain the merits of staying with someone who owned such luxurious showers and mattresses when the phone rang. Emmy wasn’t in yet, so Cammie strode over to her desk and picked up the phone.

  “Twin Ponds Sheriff Department,” she responded. She listened for a moment, then replied, “We’ll be right over.” She hun
g up and turned back to Rick, who was in the process of removing his parka. “You better keep your coat on. A body’s been discovered out in the woods.”

  Rick eyed Cammie. “You’re calling Doc, right?”

  She eyed him back. “I outrank you.”

  “But you live with him.”

  “I still outrank you.”

  “I saved your life.”

  Cammie sighed. He was right. She gathered her courage, reached for her cell and phoned Doc.

  “I found the body while looking for my dog, Luna. She’s part wolf, you know, and when she gets a scent, she’s gone. This time she ran further out into the woods than she ever has before. I had to take my snowmobile to find her.”

  “Must have been one helluva rabbit she was chasing.”

  She and Rick were standing in a small clearing in one of the more remote areas of forest that made up most of Clarke County. Lucas Young, a local carpenter was standing next to them, trying his best not to look down at the body that Doc was now examining. Luna was tied to Lucas’ snowmobile, barking loudly and dancing about in the snow.

  The area was so remote, the two officers, along with Doc, were forced to use snowmobiles to get through the thick snow in order to reach the death scene.

  “If you don’t need me anymore, I gotta get home. I haven’t fed Luna yet and, as you can see, she gets upset when I miss feeding time.”

  Cammie knew that wasn’t the real reason Lucas was anxious to leave. She noticed he wouldn’t look at the corpse. Looked at everything but the body laying a few feet from where they stood. She couldn’t blame him. She was having a hard time looking at the corpse herself.

  “We may need to call you with some additional questions,” she responded.

  “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  Lucas practically ran for his snowmobile. He untied his dog and the two of them immediately took off. Cammie watched him disappear through the trees, then forced herself to turn back to where the body lay.

  Despite over ten years in law enforcement, death was still difficult to witness. Bodies were never just bodies to Cammie. They were the receptacles of emotions and feelings and memories, and everything that made up a human being.

  Upon arriving and gazing down at the corpse, she’d looked beyond the gray pallor and ice particles stuck to the victim’s beard and moustache. She’d taken in the vacancy in his open, light blue eyes and wondered at all the things he’d seen with those eyes. The joys, the sorrows, the surprises life offered everyone. And the ultimate question she always asked herself.

  What was the very last thing you saw?

  There used to be a belief, back when police procedures and forensics was in its infancy, that whatever the victim saw at the moment of death was imprinted on their eyes. It would make her job so much easier if that were true.

  Except in this case.

  She visibly shuddered at the thought of what this poor man must have seen as he lay dying. For the first time since becoming a police officer, she looked away from the scene before her.

  “I wish Doc would put something over his face,” Rick replied, as if reading her thoughts. “Just the sight of it is giving me the heebie jeebies. No wonder Lucas ran out of here. If I wasn’t a police officer, I would have been right behind him. Shit, I would have been right in front of him.”

  Cammie didn’t need to glance back at the corpse to know Rick was right. The victim’s features were contorted into a grotesque expression of sheer horror. It made her think of the painting “The Scream” by Edvard Munch that she’d once seen on a trip to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It was full of despair, of hopelessness. And yes, of something so insidiously terrifying, she hoped to God she’d never see what Todd had seen. She was grateful when Doc turned the body over to continue his inspection.

  She looked around at the scene as, despite three sweaters and long underwear beneath her snowpants, she hopped back and forth in the frigid temperatures in an effort to keep warm. She glanced back at Rick and frowned.

  “It’s freezing outside. Don’t you ever get cold?”

  No matter how frigid the weather, Rick never wore a hat. It was as though his Native and French Canadian blood somehow made him impervious to the below freezing temperatures. She envied him that ability. This was her second winter in Twin Ponds, and she was still wearing three sweaters, thinsulate long underwear and two pairs of thick, waterproof hiking socks. Not to mention her thick parka, bomber hat and double insulated gloves. She knew that if she fell in the snow, they wouldn’t find her body until spring.

  “I’m like a Huskie. I live for the cold.”

  She grunted, then gazed back over the woods.

  She’d never been to this part of the forest, which wasn’t surprising. The town of Twin Ponds was set amidst dense wilderness on four sides, with one road connecting them to the outside world. She could spend a lifetime hiking around Clarke County, and she’d still never cover the entire area. Surrounding them were dense pines, tall oaks and white birch trees. To the right was a narrow path, easily missed except for the disturbance where the victim had made his way through the deep snow. On the opposite side was the route they’d taken from Lucas Young’s cabin, the snow kicked up by both the snowmobiles and Luna’s tracks.

  “So you said his name was Todd Paradis?” Cammie asked, burrowing deeper into her multiple sweaters and polar-tec parka with the Twin Ponds Sheriff Department logo stitched on the sleeves.

  “Yeah,” Rick answered. “He was a quiet sort of dude. Not much of a talker.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him. Was he from around these parts?”

  Rick shook his head. “He came up from Manchester, New Hampshire about four years ago, way before you came back. When he was a kid, he and his parents took hunting vacations out this way. According to him, the folks had the best luck out behind Crow Mountain.”

  “The folks?” Cammie asked. “What about his luck?”

  “Todd hated hunting. He once told me he’d have rather gone to Disney World. But when you’re a kid, you don’t get much say on where your parents choose to go. So instead of hanging out with Mickey Mouse, he hung out with corpses of Bullwinkle the Moose.”

  Cammie quickly pushed away the mental image that sprang up of a bleeding out moose singing “It’s a Small World After All.”

  “Lovely,” she murmured. “Sounds like you knew him.”

  “I suppose as well as anyone could. When he first moved here, he and I would occasionally share a beer at Zee’s. As I said, he wasn’t the most open of guys. But every once in a while, he’d let something slip. Over the years I noticed he started drinking more until he basically become a full blown alcoholic.” Rick jerked his head towards the footprint laden path. “Before that happened though, he bought a piece of land about half a mile down that way and built a small cabin. About six months ago, he went all doomsday prepper. He stopped coming into town except to buy supplies and liquor. Lots of liquor. Then he’d disappear for weeks on end until he needed to replenish his stock.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily make him a doomsday prepper.”

  “It does when you stock up on enough ammo to bring down an army.”

  Cammie’s eyebrows went up. “He was armed?”

  “To the teeth. “

  “I thought you said he hated hunting.”

  “I did. But hunting Bambi and defending your home are two different things.”

  “And you say this happened about six months ago?”

  Rick nodded. “I saw him coming out of the Grocery Emporium last July and stopped to say hi. He looked awful. Like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. He didn’t stop to talk. Just grunted at me. He went back and forth three times to fill his truck. Had enough canned goods to feed all of Clarke County, not to mention the six cases of beer and a whole lotta bullets.”

  “You don’t know if he was part of some kind of home grown militia group?”

  “I can’t really say. But To
dd was such a loner, it’s hard to see him joining much of anything.”

  But it didn’t rule out the possibility. Nor did it rule out the possibility that he might have been some sort of Maine’s version of Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, who after 17 years of waging his own war against technology using home-made bombs, was caught hiding out in the middle of the woods, in a tiny cabin.

  Like Todd Paradis.

  “I don’t suppose you have any idea what made him change so drastically?”

  Rick shook his head. “Hope to God it wasn’t a fear of aliens, though by the grotesque look on his face--” He glanced at Cammie, who coolly met his eye. “Come on, Cam! Look at him! It looks like he met the devil himself and didn’t live to tell about it.”

  Before she could respond, Doc stood up and peeled off the latex gloves, gratefully replacing them with gloves made from alpaca wool imported from Peru. Although Doc had left behind the amenities of Beacon Hill in Boston, he could never leave behind his engrained love of luxury.

  “It appears he died from hypothermia, aggravated by the amount of alcohol he consumed. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he bathed in the booze. There are no defensive wounds on him, nothing to indicate a violent attack. I’d say he stumbled outside while intoxicated, and became disoriented. Not hard to do in this wilderness. It wouldn’t take him long to succumb to the cold. Unless I find anything to the contrary during autopsy, I’ll probably rule this death by misadventure.”

  Doc glanced at Cammie, an unexpected smile tugging at his lips. “First Eli Kelley a few months ago, then Marcy and now Paradis. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re on a role.”

  Cammie sniffed. “Eli was an aberration. We may never know why Marcy went nuts, and it isn’t unusual to find a frozen human popsicle up this way. The last person who froze to death was Norton Summers, and that was just last winter.”

  “But Norton didn’t see aliens,” Rick replied.

  “We don’t know if Todd did either,” Cammie responded.